Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Techniques of the Day

Method #123: Tell them there is a surprise inside! By the time they discover that the surprise is a carrot, they will already be stuffed with a nutritious meal!

Problem: children never want to leave the pool and make mommy crazy by swimming to the middle where she can't grab them.
(no, Francesca didn't actually go in the water, but she wanted to look cool sitting there)

Solution #567: Bring one less towel than you need and tell the children the last one out of the pool doesn't get a towel! Works every time.

Problem: Great is discouraged from her stay in the hospital.

Technique #94: Drag the loud children to see "Great", which cheers her up immensely, even if it does traumatize the littlest one, who thought we were there for her. (Great is doing much, much better now!)

Problem: Need to Divert attention away from the fact that I haven't washed my hair in days and my shirt has yogurt all over it.

Resolution #2: Tell Catherine she can dress herself and then do not wash off her poison ivy medicine.

Problem: Bored child in spica cast.

Solution: Give her a spray bottle with water in it. Hours of fun!

Only 120 hours until the spica cast comes off (not that I am counting).

When my kiddos do things right and quickly, I let them choose from the "magic bag" it is full of $1 store goodies, like stickers, crafts, whatever (change it up often). They LOVE it as it is always a surprise and they have no idea what could be in the bag. My sister has her master's in child development and works in special ed, it was her idea, and let me tell you it works! Makes getting ready for school and room cleaning a breeze around here. :)